A Black Lives Matter activist running for city council in Louisville, Kentucky, has been charged after shots were fired at Democratic mayo...
A Black Lives Matter activist running for city council in Louisville, Kentucky, has been charged after shots were fired at Democratic mayoral candidate Craig Greenberg.
Quintez Brown, 21, was charged Monday with attempted murder and four counts of wanton endangerment, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal.
“Despite one bullet coming so close that it grazed my sweater and my shirt, no one was physically harmed, and we’re extraordinarily grateful for our safety,” Greenberg said later, according to a follow-up story in the Journal. “We are shaken but safe.”
Greenberg was meeting with staff members at about 10:15 a.m. Monday when a man entered his campaign office and started shooting.
A staff member shut the door while Greenberg and the others pushed tables to block the door.
Police said a 9mm Glock handgun was used, and that Brown was detained after he was spotted walking away on foot.
“Too many local families have experienced the trauma of gun violence,” Greenberg, who is Jewish, said. “Too many in Louisville were not as blessed as my team and I were today to survive.”
In announcing his bid for council, Brown quoted Kwame Ture, formerly known as Black Power leader Stokely Carmichael,
Quintez Brown, 21, is running to represent District 5 for Louisville’s Metro Council.
“Frederick Douglass said that the youth should fight to be leaders today, because the men who run this country are sick.” – Kwame Ture pic.twitter.com/tUCjXXG2hS
— Quintez Brown – District 5 (@tez4liberation) December 15, 2021
Brown participated in the unrest that took place after the death of George Floyd in 2020 and has been strident on the issue of racial justice.
In a recent Instagram post, he called for his followers to join a black supremacist militia
A recent post spoke of revolution.
“The revolutionary consciousness of the masses must understand that the struggle against the negative forces of genocide and fascism will not end at the ballot box of the ruling class,” he wrote last month on Medium. “Attempting to get within one of the two major parties has caused our leaders to become co-opted with their interests shunted to the background. They have become expendable,” he wrote.
In March 2021, he told Louisville magazine, “We want to take money away from the police.”
“We want to see less officers. We want to see less money in their budget,” he said. “You can’t reform that institution. Defunding the police is our first step toward dismantling everything that was rooted in slavery. Because they’re the original slave catchers.”
“When Black people try to liberate themselves and become free, you had the police to stop them and put them back in their place. So defunding the police to me means kind of like funding our revolution by defunding our oppression,” he said.
At that time, he said “even the most progressive Democratic leaders” are complicit in racism, adding, “we’re really at war” with the establishment.
Rob Eggert, his attorney, offered a different context for the incident.
Eggert said Brown had been battling “mental and emotional issues.”
“This is not a hate crime — it is a mental health case,” he said, according to the Journal.
One activist pushed back against any connection between Brown’s words and deeds.
“I think the idea that his attachment or his connection to (Black Lives Matter) is what motivated this is irresponsible,” activist Khalilah Collins said. “I feel like we’re trying to create this narrative of what happened, and we have no idea about nothing.”
No comments